The Road Ahead

We went to see Dr. York yesterday, and everything as it should be. My blood cell counts are all doing pretty well. My WBC count is around 6500, on the low end of normal, but normal all the same. My red cell count is the lowest it's been all treatment, but it's still within tolerable ranges - and it should be low right now, I've been getting beat up for 3 months.

I brought all the staff flowers and put them in the chemo room so all the sick people could enjoy them too. That bought me a few hugs and I got to see a bunch of people who helped me through the last few months smile.

When we sat down with Dr. York, we were in the exact same room and seating positions as we were during our initial consultation with him. I said "Dr. York, three and a half months ago, we were all three sitting right here and you told me and Stacy that we would all be OK - and here we are!" It was a weird deja vu feeling, but in a really good way since he was right!

Here's the game plan. I see him every month, once per month for the next year. During those visits, we'll discuss my recovery from the chemo and we'll take blood to check my protein markers and see if the cancer is coming back. Every two months, we'll also to a chest CT scan to make sure nothing's funky in the ol' chest cavity.

If the cancer comes back, basically the sooner it's back the worse. The next course of action will be a bone marrow transplant, and that's super scary stuff. As Stacy explained to me - and she admits that this is only her interpretation as a student here - they will take out some of my bone marrow ( owie ), then they will give me a very high dose of chemo ( double-owie ), then that will put me into another neutropenic fever ( triple-owie ), which will kill anything and everything, then they will put the bone marrow back in me ( quad-druple-owie? ). My knees are weak just re-reading that sentence. On the bright side, Dr. York said that with numbers like mine, it would be very weird to see this cancer come back - and I know him well enough now to know that he wouldn't say something like that unless he were almost positive about it. No guarantees, but it's as close as a guy like me is gonna get from a guy like him at this point.

More importantly, I feel terrific. I have normal energy levels. I'm able to function almost all day without needing a rest. We ran errands after the Doc appt. - went to the PO and to Target and got some Starbucks and drove all around looking at houses for sale in Renyoldstown and Inman Park. Then Stacy and Mom went to the florist to pick out wedding flowers, I messed around on the computer for a few hours, then we all went out to dinner at Johnny's Pizza. Sorry for all the detail, point is I was on the move from noon until 10:30 and I was tired, but not exhausted.

Also, we fell in love with a tudor cottage in Inman Park and we're going to see it today - I should probably get a job before buying a house that I can't afford, but hey... um... yeah.

So, I'm already looking for jobs. I'm working on the resume and a few of you out there have helped me with that already - again, I really appreciate that. I'm excited about being employed again. I'm ready to have productive days again and I'm even a little bit excited about getting dressed every day and going somewhere - which is weird because I didn't like doing that before the cancer. My rule about not wearing pants might be coming to an end. I'd like to find a spot in a hospital IT group, but I'm seeing some interesting postings out there for regular businesses too. I think I'd really like some morally rewarding position, but I'm not going to hold out for one right now - I need to get back in the game as quickly as possible at this point - for mental health reasons as much as financial ones. I'm gonna go crazy sitting around this house for much longer.

I was telling my Mom last night when I walked her to her car after dinner, I feel like I've turned a corner. I've talked to a few of you about this recently, so I'm going on record now and making it official - so hold me to it! I've had some horrible health habits for the past decade of adult life. Somehow I never learned that health is something you have to work at. Growing up, I always thought of sports like I thought of church - you had to go X times per week just because. You know, on Tuesday night I went to basketball practice and on Sunday night I went to youth group - for no other reason than because my parents told me to - I didn't particularly like either one!

It's absolutley not my parent's fault that I thought this way, and I think I turned out marginally better because I went to youth group - not b-ball though, that sucked and I sucked at it and I still don't like it. Also I stand by my claim that any sport in which a team scores constantly is a stupid sport - points should take time, strategy, and talent to earn and in basketball, you basically watch one guy on a team have a good night and get lucky every night - that's the whole game - it should be called "who's gonna have a good night" instead of b-ball. It's stupid and if you like it then you are stupid too.

Back to what I was telling Mom. I feel like I've turned a corner, because now I see that there isn't a warranty with my body - I have to take care of it - and that's not some empty waste of time like basketball practice, that's actually my one and only, most important job in life. That means I have to exercise and get my heart rate up, ideally every day for 30 minutes or so. It also means that I need to eat right, which luckily I'm pretty good at already.

I need to watch the booze - I've been dry except for a handful of drinks during the past 4 months and I feel really good. It's amazing how good you feel in the morning when you don't drink a bottle of wine the night before. My new drinking philosophy is simple - have fewer, nicer drinks. At the next party, instead of having 6 beers I'll have 2 scotch's and when Stacy and I have a nice dinner, we'll have one bottle of $50 wine instead of 2 bottles of $25 wine.

I'm also planning on thinking of alcohol as part of the meal, which has been very effective for me in the past. If I have wine with dinner, I pair it with the entree and keep it to one or two glasses during dinner. Then when I move on to desert, I finish my wine and have coffee. In my mind, that stops the drinking process and rounds out the meal for me. That way, when we get home from a nice dinner, I'm much less likely to pop open more wine and continue drinking - and even if I do, at least I took a break for an hour or so with the coffee and desert course. This will be super easy to do, because Stacy loves having coffee at the end of nice dinners already - I'm always the one to spoil it and order more wine because I want to continue drinking.

In all honesty, you guys know that I've been calming down my lifestyle for the past few years now anyway. Does this mean that you'll never see me take another Tequila shot? Hell no, it will happen again ( bachelor party ), but it will be fewer and farther between as time goes on - and that was gonna happen anyway without the cancer. Most Men tend to calm down when good Women do things like agree to marry them. Also, as I get older, it seems less important to argue about nothing at the bar at night and more important to get things done in the morning.

In summary, the next year is going to be all about establishing a healthy lifestyle for the guy who never knew he needed it. It won't happen overnight and I will need help with it. When I first got sick, many of you pitched in and got me presents. I'm know I have the right friends around me because instead of a bottle of nice scotch, I was given a commercial blender to make protein smoothies. That's a perfect example of the person I was vs. the person I want to try to become.